It is clear that unless I can devise some very tricky premises and by false deductions tack on to them a fallacy which springs from the truth, I shall not be able to distinguish between what is desirable and what is to be avoided! I am ashamed! Old men as we are, dealing with a problem so serious, we make play of it!
"'Mouse' is a syllable. Now a mouse eats cheese; therefore, a syllable eats cheese."
Suppose now that I cannot solve this problem; see what peril hangs over my head as a result of such ignorance! What a scrape I shall be in! Without doubt I must beware, or someday I shall be catching syllables in a mousetrap, or, if I grow careless, a book may devour my cheese!
Unless, perhaps, the following syllogism is shrewder still: "'Mouse' is a syllable. Now a syllable does not eat cheese. Therefore a mouse does not eat cheese."
What childish nonsense! Do we knit our brows over this sort of problem? Do we let our beards grow long for this reason? Is this the matter which we teach with sour and pale faces?
"'Mouse' is a syllable. Now a mouse eats cheese; therefore, a syllable eats cheese."
Suppose now that I cannot solve this problem; see what peril hangs over my head as a result of such ignorance! What a scrape I shall be in! Without doubt I must beware, or someday I shall be catching syllables in a mousetrap, or, if I grow careless, a book may devour my cheese!
Unless, perhaps, the following syllogism is shrewder still: "'Mouse' is a syllable. Now a syllable does not eat cheese. Therefore a mouse does not eat cheese."
What childish nonsense! Do we knit our brows over this sort of problem? Do we let our beards grow long for this reason? Is this the matter which we teach with sour and pale faces?
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 48
Details most certainly do matter, and a subtle nuance can make all the difference, but whenever we divorce words from the reality they are meant to signify, we are just playacting. The manipulation of symbols is the mark of the clever man, not of the wise man, which is probably why the sage has no prospects on Madison Avenue.
You may believe Seneca is exaggerating when he mentions the arguments about mice and syllables, but then you weren’t there when a roomful of esteemed scholars almost came to blows over the best way to have a conversation with a stone. Apparently, only fascists refuse to learn the language of rocks.
I have now been in the world of professional academia for twenty-five years, and I have collected far too many stories about our ridiculous extremes of quibbling. I try not to think about them too much, because I then find myself falling into resentment and despair, and if I’m going to follow my own conscience, I’d best stay clear of all the drama.
As I read this letter, however, I can’t help but remember my doctoral defense, which has now become a sort of warning to myself about the sort of person I most definitely don’t wish to become.
The Chairman of our department had told me a few years earlier that he only tolerated me in the program as a favor to my father, so I already knew to avoid crossing paths with him. Unfortunately, his lofty position meant that he had to serve on my board, so I could sense there was going to be trouble.
After I finished presenting a summary of my years of work, I was relieved to be asked some challenging questions about the history of the problem by my other readers. Yet the boss waited until the end, stared at me blankly for a moment, and simply said:
“Thomas Aquinas wasn’t a realist.”
Since that was a big part of my whole thesis, I flipped open my text, pointed to the relevant passages where Aquinas very clearly defined himself as a realist, and I even managed to be polite enough to ask if I had somehow misread those words.
“You may think otherwise, but Thomas Aquinas still wasn’t a realist.” I waited for a brilliant refutation, though none followed. Was the Chairman about to wave his hand to inform me that these weren’t the droids I was looking for?
Maybe if I tried again, using different language, I could make my case? Fat chance.
“I’m afraid I must disagree with you. Thomas Aquinas was never a realist.” Now he was clearly getting angry. What good could come from quarrelling? I nodded and shut my trap.
There can be no conversation with someone who affirms without evidence, and there can be no friendship with someone who twists a term to fit his fancies. It suddenly occurred to me that the whole situation was like a perverse parody of that famous line from The Princess Bride:
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Details most certainly do matter, and a subtle nuance can make all the difference, but whenever we divorce words from the reality they are meant to signify, we are just playacting. The manipulation of symbols is the mark of the clever man, not of the wise man, which is probably why the sage has no prospects on Madison Avenue.
You may believe Seneca is exaggerating when he mentions the arguments about mice and syllables, but then you weren’t there when a roomful of esteemed scholars almost came to blows over the best way to have a conversation with a stone. Apparently, only fascists refuse to learn the language of rocks.
I have now been in the world of professional academia for twenty-five years, and I have collected far too many stories about our ridiculous extremes of quibbling. I try not to think about them too much, because I then find myself falling into resentment and despair, and if I’m going to follow my own conscience, I’d best stay clear of all the drama.
As I read this letter, however, I can’t help but remember my doctoral defense, which has now become a sort of warning to myself about the sort of person I most definitely don’t wish to become.
The Chairman of our department had told me a few years earlier that he only tolerated me in the program as a favor to my father, so I already knew to avoid crossing paths with him. Unfortunately, his lofty position meant that he had to serve on my board, so I could sense there was going to be trouble.
After I finished presenting a summary of my years of work, I was relieved to be asked some challenging questions about the history of the problem by my other readers. Yet the boss waited until the end, stared at me blankly for a moment, and simply said:
“Thomas Aquinas wasn’t a realist.”
Since that was a big part of my whole thesis, I flipped open my text, pointed to the relevant passages where Aquinas very clearly defined himself as a realist, and I even managed to be polite enough to ask if I had somehow misread those words.
“You may think otherwise, but Thomas Aquinas still wasn’t a realist.” I waited for a brilliant refutation, though none followed. Was the Chairman about to wave his hand to inform me that these weren’t the droids I was looking for?
Maybe if I tried again, using different language, I could make my case? Fat chance.
“I’m afraid I must disagree with you. Thomas Aquinas was never a realist.” Now he was clearly getting angry. What good could come from quarrelling? I nodded and shut my trap.
There can be no conversation with someone who affirms without evidence, and there can be no friendship with someone who twists a term to fit his fancies. It suddenly occurred to me that the whole situation was like a perverse parody of that famous line from The Princess Bride:
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
—Reflection written in 3/2013
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